Hasan is guilty

Updated 11:50 pm, Friday, August 23, 2013

Private security personnel unload shackles before the deliberations continued in the trial of Maj. Nidal Hasan. It wasn't known if the shackles were related to that case.

Private security personnel unload shackles before the deliberations continued in the trial of Maj. Nidal Hasan. It wasn't known if the shackles were related to that case.

Photo: Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-News

Hasan is guilty

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FORT HOOD — A long, contentious legal drama edged toward an end Friday when a military jury here found Army Maj. Nidal Hasan guilty of killing 13 people and wounding 31 others in the worst shooting spree ever on a U.S base.

Hasan looked straight at the jury president, an Army colonel, before she read the verdict.

“Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, this court-martial finds you by unanimous vote of the jury, guilty,” she declared Friday afternoon, adding that the panel returned the same verdict on every charge and specification.

Hasan, who has represented himself, dropped his head but showed no emotion, and moments later phoned a lawyer who represented him after the Nov. 5, 2009, rampage at Fort Hood.

Some relatives of the victims, who sat quietly through a three-week trial, became emotional after Hasan left the room. One held back tears.

One of his victims, a GI shot by Hasan six times, even as he crawled in a desperate bid to survive, welcomed the news.

“I'll celebrate, probably barbecue some steak, have a beer or something,” retired Army Reserve Staff Sgt. Shawn Manning, 37, of Lacey, Wash., said from Tacoma when he heard the news.

The verdict set the stage for Hasan's sentencing next week. Relatives of those he killed in what's known here as “5/11” will get a chance to address him directly in the sentencing phase, in which Hasan could get the death penalty.

The jury of 13 senior officers spent about seven hours deliberating Thursday and Friday on 45 counts of murder and premeditated murder. Its members saw grisly images of the dead on blood-stained floors and listened to a harrowing 911 recording that captured the moans of mortally wounded Pfc. Michael Pearson, a 22-year-old explosives ordnance technician and musician.

The verdict was all but assured since the start of the trial Aug. 6 when Hasan, in one of his few remarks in the courtroom, admitted his guilt, telling the jury he was “on the wrong side” of a war the Army wanted to send him to in Afghanistan, and that he switched sides.

“On Nov. 5, 2009, 13 U.S. soldiers were killed and many more injured,” he said. “The evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter.”

Hasan wanted to tell the jury he launched the attack to defend the Taliban, one of their leaders, and Afghan women and children.

A retired Army colonel who represented Hasan until they parted under still-mysterious circumstances said he got a call from the psychiatrist “a few seconds” after the verdict.

Belton attorney John Galligan said Hasan didn't offer a reaction, “but I suspect he would join me that he is not surprised based on the restrictions placed on the defense.”

The jury returns Monday, when prosecutors plan to put on up to 20 witnesses in the sentencing phase, all but three of them relatives of the dead. Though the prosecution hasn't declared its intent, it's expected to seek the death penalty, highly unusual in the military.

After the verdict late Friday, Osborn sifted through photos that could be used in next week's testimony. She also asked Hasan outside of the jury's presence if he wished to continue representing himself in the sentencing phase — an idea she thought was unwise.

“I do,” he replied.

“This is where the members will decide whether you should live or whether you should die,” said Osborn, who repeatedly has warned him to rely on three military lawyers he fired two months ago.

Paralyzed from the chest down, Hasan spoke sparingly during the trial and rarely objected. While prosecutors brought 89 witnesses to the stand and entered more than 700 exhibits into evidence, he submitted one item — part of an officer evaluation that gave him high marks. He opted not to put up a defense or even address the jury before it deliberated.

Prosecutors spent 12 days laying out their case before Col. Steve Henricks made his closing statement Thursday.

His final argument boiled down to a one thing — that the shooting was planned. He said Hasan did his homework before buying the right gun and ammunition, trained extensively at a firing range and did Internet searches on suicide bombers.

Hasan, who referred to himself as an Islamic holy warrior in his opening statement, had a plan that day.

Hasan, armed with two handguns, 420 rounds and 16 ammunition magazines, was “a smart bomb” and Station 13 at the deployment center where he opened fire “his personal kill zone,” Henricks told the jury.

The father of Pfc. George O. Stratton III, badly wounded in the shooting and now barely coping with daily life, was pleased with the verdict.

“Common sense would tell anyone they would bring in the verdict that way, but I think everybody would be better served if they dumped him in the worst prison in world and left him there,” said George Stratton Jr., 52, of Post Falls, Idaho. “I think it would be better for everybody if he had to suffer for a year.”

A Department of the Army police officer, Kimberly Munley, was the last wounded and testified that Hasan's gun jammed as he tried to finish her off. She posted on Twitter, saying she was “overwhelmed with joy and tears!!!”

“I sure hope those 14 angels (are) dancing with joy from above! God bless the victims in their strength,” she said.

The 14th angel was a reference to the unborn child of Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant and cried, “My baby! My baby!” as she lay dying from Hasan's gunshots.